Look, Watch, See

A SIGN with a figure in a wheelchair can't block the view;

A park abandoned between two hotels, a parking lot, a roadway ramp and the dust, dirt and emptiness as hollow as a once-white, now-grey seemingly plaster of paris sculpture of freedom or a bird or something, can't block the view; Peeling stucco, painted foolishly buildings, whirlamagigs, taxi stands, all the simplicity of a sandune covered by banality, can't block the view;

For it's an extraordinary view, an impossible one, absolutely unique and a great secret -- or at least so shows the evidence, for it's not noticed by many and yet it's obviously something worth seeing. It's a view in motion, of course, and also proof that everything else is in motion. This view is the guarantor of place much more than any postcard.

No wonder it was a frightening view to hippo-eating nomads on the swampy edges of a river dividing the sandunes on which this place are built.

SO, TAKE ALL the issues, take all the news, take all the arguments and divisions and despair and destruction and set it all aside.

Watch the sunset.

Look how the summer, despite the calendar, isn't over. Look how the clouds for a few moments become Japanese-like mountains, and then suddenly are north African dunes.

Look how the sun on particularly cloudless days turns key-hole shape for a long minute of nestling on the water's reflection; and look how the water seems to be reflected in the sun itself, and the imagined hiss of descent into the night echoes in the ear.

Look how the streets empty earlier, the beaches empty earlier, the youngsters are gone from the sidewalks; Look how in one day, from August to September, overnight and arbitrarily, one season ends and another begins; Look how the view can't be blocked, how even in the backyard of a tall building that has cast a deep shade over everything since shortly after mid-day, at that hour of changing light, looking upward reveals a sky going orange and then red and then purple.

Look how the moment there's a horizon in the west anywhere in this place, the sunset makes you pause if you notice it, and if you don't notice, take a look at what you're missing.

THERE'S A REASON for this, especially nowadays, when the greatest fear seems to be anything of originality, of change, of alternative to all the things we've grown used to, have accepted as our lot.

Taxes. Interest rates. Unemployment. Intifada. Anti-semitisim. Racism. The undercurrents of violence, the provincialism of patriotism serving financial interests. The banality of complaint about what has gone wrong and the banality of self-congratulations.

Is there any minister, MK or mayor whom you believe has lately sat down to simply watch a sunset. They all speak in cliches, of course, that's their profession.

But it's possible to watch a sunset and get past the cliche of the sunset. It's possible to watch a sunset and realize that no sunset is the same everywhere, that like a global fingerprint of a very specific time and place, every sunset everywhere in the world has everything in common with every other sunset, but in each place is unique.

So, watch the next sunset. Find a place where the view is not blocked, watch the world turning, and consider those distant places beyond the horizon as well as the nearest leaf changing colour as the light of day changes colour.

It's up to you whether you'll see a world that is constant change or a world in which there's nothing new under the sun.

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